There's probably a few guys that I've missed out, mainly because I probably consider them unrealistic.

Overview:

At first, the thought of only two UM commits making the top 150 made me think ESPN was going to screw us over in the class rankings, but actually it's not that bad once you look at UM targets.

The theme of this class is going to be four star commits who didn't quite make the 150. If we take the Ideal class as the final class for this year, then UM would end up with a whopping 14 four star recruits! Last year we had four....

So actually these rankings are very positive for Michigan, and even though we may not end up with the true headline recruits like a Gunner Kiel, this class should still end up somewhere in the range of 9-15 in the class rankings.

Rich Rod's first class had 7 players in the top 150. So much for Hoke taking Michigan recruiting to another level...

You can compare to 2011 and 2010 classes if you like, but those are the worst recruiting classes ever tracked at the University. If that's your standard of comparison then you might as well compare to the 3 win and 5 win seasons and call every other season a success.

Bottomline is this: Michigan recruits itself. As long as the coach doesn't mess up he should have a class made up primarily of 4 stars. Hoke has yet to differentiate himself in anything other than timing of commitments.

That said...signing day is a long way away. Plenty of time to prove all the hype right.

I was referring to the 2009 class. Its hard to count the '08 class for or against Rodriguez when it was half another guy's, same goes for Hoke in '11 (the worst rated class in UM history).

The 2009 class includes Denard, Lewan, Roh, Gordon, etc. It's a pretty good class despite high attrition and a major bust (so far) in Gallon and probably in Campbell too. This class, as sophomores, played a big part in taking the team up from 3 wins to 7 since they arrived.

Recruiting wasn't really a problem for Rodriguez. He got dinged a bit in '10 because of job security and losing but Rodriguez's problem was attrition and player development.

Comparing apples to apples (quality of recruiting class at the time of signing day) is something we can't do for a few more months, but what Hoke has done so far at Michigan is thoroughly unexceptional based on a historical norm of what Michigan does.

That said, he's not screwing up his chance and he has positive momentum going on the perception front - which may have tangible results on the recruiting front in the months to come. And there is a major opportunity with OSU on the ropes.

I would like to point out that the number of stars a player receives really doesn't mean that much, A prime example of this would be Mike Hart... He was a 3 star running back coming out of High School and ended up being one of the best backs the school has ever seen.

Also, People need to understand that Hoke is recruiting the players he wants in his system, the players he feels that can perform and produce week in and week out. If a player receives a scholarship offer from Michigan, they see something special in that player. I don't know about all of you but I'm 100% behind coach Hoke and the decisions he's made. We are in good hands with Hoke and his coaching staff.

If you don't have faith in the recruiting services, there's no reason to follow recruiting at all. You can just trust the coaches to find guys that fit the system and ignore the recruiting process all together - plenty of fans do it.

That said, once a guy commits to michigan, I no longer care about his stars or how his rankings change. By then, the staff has decided. If anything, I'd rather a Michigan recruit get downgraded to 3 stars so that he gets a 'no-respect' chip on his shoulder and comes in fired up.

Im not sure what part my post made u think I didn't have faith in the recruiting staff? I clearly said in my post "im 100% behind hoke" perhaps ur confusing me with BlueMarrow? But anyway please re-read my post, u pretty much said the same thing as me :)

I think he ended up going back home to Texas and just went to a local junior college or something... as for the ratings, I really don't think they pay much attention to website ratings, I think they more go by their own evaluations from the player's film and the way they played when they attended camp.